


memory is a reliving

by Tobi_Black



Series: Waking Dreams [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Bucky Barnes & Winter Soldier are Different Personalities, Gen, M/M, Magical Realism, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, The Morrigan - Freeform, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-05-31 15:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15122381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tobi_Black/pseuds/Tobi_Black
Summary: Steve dreamed of his life before. He remembered.The Soldier remembered something as well.





	1. winter cold

**Author's Note:**

> This (*) at the end of a chapter title is a chapter explicitly from Bucky.
> 
> And [..italics..] are present time.

It was in late 1924 that he had met Bucky, the air still warm but a chill just starting to sink in.

Winter came early that year.

Being adventurous children, they had wandered through most of Brooklyn as they played. Being children, few had thought about how they could overhear some shopkeepers talking about how it would be a lean winter, with crops failing in the mid-west.

His mother had listened to the things they’d told her they’d overhear during the day with a little frown, chewing on her lip as the frown deepened with each word.

(It would be _years_ before he realized that he’d heard the first whispers of the Great Depression, as they came to call it.

 _Then_ , he had just known that the ache in his stomach, a hunger that was never satisfied, was there to stay.)

His few complaints about the food they ate, little better than what the grocer would discard, quit as he watched a worried frown settle permanently on his mother’s face. She’d always worried at the amount of money they had, meager at the best of times with only her work as a nurse funding them and his copious medical bills and various medicines draining their funds, but now it was less than normal.

Then their heat went out after the first frost of the season in mid-October and she didn’t have the money to get it back.

[ _It had been-_ was _so cold._ ]

His mother forbade him from going anywhere out of bed in anything but layer upon layers of clothes, as the slightest chill got him sick on a good day – and these were not good days.

Ever since he’d met Bucky, they had rarely gone a day when they didn’t meet up.

Most mornings, the older boy would come and escort him to school, stopping to pick up the oldest of his little sisters and the only one old enough for school – Becca – on the way. Then he’d caught a cold that had refused to go away, leaving him sniffling and shivering in his mother’s bed wrapped up in blanket after blanket, and Bucky had skipped school during that first week after dropping Becca off.

(Neither of their mothers, who upon introduction had gotten on just as well as their sons, had had the heart to reprimand Bucky when Sarah had confided in Winifred that she didn’t think her son would survive this winter.)

The second week, when Steve neither got better nor got worse, Winifred had put her foot down. Steve hadn’t wanted Bucky to not be there, but he’d been stubborn, and had been trying to get the seven-year-old to go back to school so he could make something of his life, smart boy that he was. _Bucky_ hadn’t wanted to leave, but they were both momma’s boys and couldn’t refuse them.

Particularly when Winifred’s face had started to get the same pinched quality Sarah’s had adopted months earlier.

(Steve never told anyone how mere days after Bucky went – unhappily, and resistant to the idea – back to school, that the Morrigan, whom he’d only seen at a distance for months, as if held at bay, returned. She settled herself in a roost near the roof of their building, and he could hear her _caw_ throughout the day and night.

His mother always turned pale at the sound as she curled up around him, coughing and shaking in the cold night.

He never found out, that winter, she’d feared that the Morrigan would come for _her_ , and ensure that he would follow her into death.)

In the midst of the next cold snap, when snow had begun to follow and he still had not recovered, when his mother had bundled skinny little him that looked all of five instead of closer to seven, in as many of his clothes as she could get on him at once before putting a pair of her thicker dresses on him over that, (rightfully) worried that he would freeze to death while she went to work, the Morrigan had come down from her roost and had sat on the window sill outside their room.

It was only vaguely that, as the temperature continued to drop and no matter how many blankets were wrapped around him, that he felt cold.

[ _It was so cold._

_The cold was in his bones, freezing the blood in his veins._

_If there was breathe in his chest, it would have been frozen mist on the exhale – but his lungs were like blocks of ice._ ]

Barely heard the frantic pounding on the door of his home what could have been an hour, or hours, after his mother left.

[ _Time was such a funny concept when so cold. An eternity passed in the blink of an eye. A second lasted forever._ ]

Vaguely remembered stumbling out of his cocoon to the door to see a blue-tinged Bucky with snow in his dark hair and soaking into his clothes.

[ _Young Bucky blended into Bucky as he’d last seen him, in his navy-blue jacket with snow in his hair again, smirking and asking if this was payback for the Cyclone._

 _He reached out as he saw Bucky_ Fall, _eyes snapping open in his watery grave, and his fingertips could almost touch him._

 _He screamed for Bucky and he choked on water, drowning again and again until he mercifully felt no more._ ]

The older boy had spent most of the week at the bedside of his younger sisters, fretting and worrying over how Ana had caught a cold and his father, who drank most evenings, had not been seen for most of the last couple of days. Winifred had taken pity on Bucky as she fussed over her husband, who had come back home fully sober for the first time in years and had taken Bucky’s place at Ana’s side, after scrounging up for Bucky what she needed for a stew that her mother swore by.

As such, Bucky had brought a bowl of that stew and a giant knitted blanket with him and seeing Steve sniffling and wavering while standing there in his mother’s dress, had pushed past him, closing the door behind them before the little heat still inside could escape.

He remembered that Bucky had picked him up like he weighed nothing, and had carefully, gently, tucked his sneezing, wheezing, shivering frame back into his mother’s bed.

He remembered Bucky shedding his own damp clothes and pulling on a dress of Sarah’s for lack of anything else big enough, before gently chiding for how his attention had lapsed because he had jumped at suddenly having the older boy next to him on the bed after retrieving the stew, holding out a spoonful of it to him.

He remembered being fed as Bucky whispered more to himself than him in a language he didn’t know then.(Now, he could recognize that Bucky had been muttering in Romanian; _Come on Steve, there we go, eat and you’ll feel better. Mother swears by this stew, says her mother saved her father’s life with it, and that’s what I intend it to do for you._ It made his chest warm to realize that even then, Bucky had cared so much for him.)

After he’d eaten until he was _full_ , Bucky had practically licked the bowl clean to settle the gnawing at his own belly, then crawled under the big knitted monstrosity he had brought and settled over the entirety of the bed, cuddling up behind him. Bucky’s body heat had settled into his aching joints and soothed the fever that had come after his mother had left, and blurry-eyed, he watched as the Morrigan gave a final loud _caw_ then flew off.

Bucky had wrapped himself around his smaller frame, left arm under him and palm laid over his chest, feeling his heartbeat, other arm curled over him and pulled him back, clutching at the sleeve of Steve’s dress like by sheer force of will, he could keep him there among the living.

(He never saw the gold that had flashed in Bucky’s eyes as he glared murder out the window at the raven watching them, promising a _fight_ if she dared to take him while he was there.)

He was asleep when his mother had come in half-panicked, half-believing that the cold had finally ended his life.

She had frozen at the sight of tufts of blond and brown hair sticking out of a giant knitted blanket she’d never seen before on her bed. Had slowly pulled back the top of the blanket, to see her son sleeping easier than she’d ever seen, with a warm flush of life on his cheeks despite how his breathe misted the air. Seen him tucked beneath Bucky’s chin, clutched tight to his chest.

Instead of the cold blue-tinged soulless body of her boy that she’d been afraid to find.

(She never told anyone of how in that moment, as she watched the two children cuddle for warmth in her dresses, that she was reminded of a dragon guarding its treasure with a fierce devotion.

Never told anyone that as the years went on, the feeling never faded and instead _grew_.

That as she slowly died, the feeling that Bucky would be there to assure that her _ghrain_ would _live_ even without her there to shelter him, gave her _comfort_.)


	2. redrawing the lines between you and me

As the weather had warmed to balmy but still _cold_ , though less so, Steve’s cold had finally passed.

Bucky came over every day again – after school, until he could come back to class.

Steve hated the cold, but that they could stay _inside_ and Bucky would regale him with these stories his grandfather had told him, about the Old Country, about Romania, about the _true_ Vlad Dracul – not the Dracula that Bram Stoker had made and who his grandfather cursed at every mention – while _he_ would draw the animated Bucky, made it _bearable_. More than bearable, if he was honest with himself.

(He hadn’t been. He could see that now, could force himself to see that now, but he had never wanted to cast a light on what his feelings for Bucky were and risk what they had.)

By the end of that winter, he could recite with Bucky many of the elder Barnes’ stories as the older man regaled the Barnes children with them, and had filled his entire sketchbook and then some full of drawings of Bucky.

He remembered that with money so tight, he’d taken to using whatever scraps of paper he could get his hands on to fulfilling that itch to draw Bucky – then stuffing them into the absolutely filled sketchbook when he was done. His mother had given him a piece of cord to bind it shut so they didn’t get everywhere with a twinkle in her eye and he’d done his best to not go red – but was sure he didn’t succeed by how she’d laughed.

(The embarrassment was worth it, to hear her laugh.)

He drew _other_ things than Bucky, lots of things ranging anywhere from the city around them to the people they passed on the street, and Bucky always saw those, but his true muse, and his absolute favorite thing to draw, was always Bucky. And as much as he drew him, nothing ever seemed quite right, never seemed to _quite_ capture the _essence_ of Bucky.

He hid those drawings of Bucky under a loose floorboard in his mother’s room.

It wasn’t that he was _ashamed_ of them; he would show Bucky those when he felt like he had finally drawn the photo of Bucky that he felt was _worthy_ of being seen. Bucky _deserved_ to see exactly how Steve saw him.

(Of course, looking back, he wondered how much would have changed in their lives if Bucky had known that he’d been besotted with him pretty much from day one of their acquaintance.

Wondered what face would Bucky have made at knowing _– seeing_ – that.)


	3. play pretend for more

The next spring, Becca had pouted in annoyance that the other girls on her street wouldn’t play with her for how she was a tomboy and had loudly proclaimed that she wanted to be just like her big brother.

As she shadowed Bucky, following him around not unlike Steve did too, she’d pouted at her big brother. Hoping that by pouting at him – knowing that Bucky had a soft spot for her and taking full advantage of it – that he would find a way to find someone to play house with her as she wanted.

Bucky had gone quiet and still at her pout, clearly trying to think of something to appease the younger girl.

Because he _hated_ how there were glimmers of angry tears in her eyes at the fucktards who’d refused to play with her for not taking their shit, particularly as this was the girl who had, when a boy had dared to call her _ugly_ , had punched his teeth out.

(Bucky had regaled that story to Steve with such _pride_ , and it had been easy to see how that while Becca adored her older brother, it was obviously a mutual feeling.)

When’d been thinking too long for her liking, Becca had turned her pout on Steve, knowing that if she made him blush and stutter as he was wont to do when teased, that her brother would come charging in like Vlad Dracul had in her grandfather’s stories about the people who had captured the legendary man’s heart.

(It was perhaps fitting that Becca had figured them out before anyone – before even themselves. She’d always been such a big part of their lives, would have always been, and she’d loved them with the Barnes devotion.)

A sparkle came to her eyes at the thought, and the pout became a shit-eating grin.

She’d proceeded to drag Steve to the room she’d shared with her sisters and Bucky – then pestered him into wearing one of her dresses, one that for all that he was a year older than her and should have been bigger, had been a bit too big for him.

He remembered not resisting very much, too used to being bundled up in his mother’s clothes when it got too cold and she fretted that it would be the death of him.

That without any friends or sibling, he had spent more than one day by himself in the cold puttering around his little home like he’d seen his mother do. That he had more than once pulled on one of her dresses of his own accord and tied his floppy hair back into thin pigtails like he’d seen her do when it was warm and she was happy, trying to imitate how she moved as he tried to clean, mimicking the one role model he’d had.

He remembered Bucky having rushed after them with a belated pause, staring as he’d slipped that too big dress on and putting up only a _little_ resistance about how boys didn’t play dress up (like that). That Bucky had stared without blinking took away the ugly feeling that had sprung up hearing that from _him_ – made it clear that he was just repeating the attitude of their times.

(Looking back, he realized that _he’d_ been more than a bit oblivious – because that moment had been more than a bit clear regarding Bucky’s feelings. He’d just always missed it.)

Then Bucky had grinned with all his teeth as Becca had explained to them that if the other girls wouldn’t play house with her, _they_ could.

He remembered them playing house a _lot_ that spring and summer, with him dressing up in Becca’s clothes so he could play at being the mother or the sister. Bucky somehow always ended up playing at being the father, or the suitor of the sister, while Becca was content to play their daughter, or a sister, sometimes of the suitor and sometimes of the girl being courted.

(Which in hindsight, was glaring obvious proof of her approval. And Bucky’s own thoughts on the matter, because he’d never protested about their roles.)

He remembered Bucky teaching him how to braid Ana’s hair so that he could do hers as he did Becca’s when they started going back to classes – with the token explanation that it was fitting of his ‘role’ as if he would argue.

He remembered how red he’d blushed at how Bucky called him _baby doll_ during those games.

He remembered how even after they stopped playing, or at least as often after Becca befriended a newcomer on the block, that Bucky didn’t mind playing the game every once in a while, even when it was just them.

He remembered how, sometimes after, even when not dressed up, Bucky called him _baby doll, sweetheart, darling_.

(In retrospect, he could call himself all sorts of oblivious and a massive idiot – Bucky hadn’t been all that subtle _at all_ with his feelings toward him.)


End file.
